Westworld, Ho

Westworld: 8 Most Important Things We Learned From This Week’s Vengeful Episode

Westworld is back with a third episode titled The Stray, directed by a Game of Thrones favorite: Neil Marshall. Thankfully, very few new characters got introduced—we have enough to track already—but there were a number of new twists and revelations. So strap in and consider this your spoiler warning. Here are the eight most important things we learned this week.

Shooting Bullet Holes in a Popular Fan Theory: In case you missed it last week, the Westworld fandom got all excited over a very intriguing fan theory: What if Jimmi Simpson’s character, William, was actually the younger version of Ed Harris’s Man in Black? What if Westworld was showing us two timelines? If you watch Episode 2 again (with these details of the theory in mind), it mostly holds up! But as soon as Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood)—shell-shocked from her awakening and post-MiB trauma—stumbles into William and Logan’s (Ben Barnes) camp at the end of Episode 3, the theory flies out the window. It seems like everything we’re witnessing is on the same timeline. Too bad; that theory really did seem like a veryJonathan Nolan-esque thing to do.

The Founder: Still, that certainly won’t be the end of fan theories—and here’s some new vital info that’s sure to launch a dozen of them. Probably the most important thing we learned in this episode is that Dr. Robert Ford (Anthony Hopkins) did not create Westworld alone. Thanks to a fuzzy photo (and some remarkably expensive-looking young Hopkins CGI), we got to go back in time to the founding of the theme park and learn about Arnold—Ford’s original partner. According to Ford (an unreliable narrator if I ever met one), Arnold got too invested in the possibilities of the park. Driven by tragedy in his own life, he was insistent on figuring out a way to “create consciousness” in the hosts. It’s an impulse Ford makes clear he sees in Bernard (Jeffrey Wright) as well. Arnold (once again, according to Ford) died in the park in a way the looked like an accident to the outside world, but read as suicide to Ford.

So Is Bernard an Android or What? Viewers have been wondering, since the first episode, if Bernard is secretly an android—just like James Marsden’s Teddy. And while the history of his dead son and his (ex?-)wife (played by Gina Torres) on a futuristic Skype call might negate that theory for some, I’m not sure it’s enough. As Elsie (Shannon Woodward) tells Stubbs (Luke Hemsworth), the backstories for the hosts are very rich and detailed. They “anchor” the host and are the “cornerstone” of their entire illusion of humanity. Bernard’s dead son (and, yes, even Gina Torres) could all be a part of his android backstory.

The next question is whether Bernard is an android that Ford made from scratch, or if he’s actually Arnold’s consciousness uploaded into an android body. Ford said that Arnold was driven by personal tragedy—such as, perhaps, a dead son? And while the androids keep talking to an “Arnold” as they malfunction, we, the audience, hear Jeffrey Wright’s voice in Dolores’s head as she goes off programming. I confess, the old photo of Ford and Arnold is so fuzzy and sepia that I can’t even tell the race of the original co-founder. Bear in mind, though, Ford could have uploaded Arnold’s consciousness into any old robot body. We’ll have to stay tuned to find out.

Weapons: We learn, from both Dolores’s reluctance during target practice and Elsie’s helpful exposition about the axe, that some androids in the park are not authorized to handle weapons. But apparently, a glitch in their code can help them override that programming. (Like Stubbs said, just one line of code is preventing the hosts from killing everyone in sight.) So we see Dolores, no longer gun shy, taking symbolic revenge on all the men who have ever sexually assaulted her. (Seriously, she has the worst loop, right? It’s all dropped cans, winsome horse rides, slaughter, and rape. Seemingly every day.) But long story short, we don’t know where that gun that may be able to harm guests as well as hosts has gone. Does she still have it? We do know that, despite what she’s promised Bernard, Dolores has wandered off her loop.

It’s All in the Stars: What’s with the constellations in the carvings? Is this just another example of androids waking up? Of an evolved, self-aware consciousness? Or will we learn more about why an Orion-like figure was carved onto that turtle? This show—or at least the Man in Black—seems to be preoccupied with maps. . . and constellations are, after all, the original map.

A New Glitch: We also see a new kind of malfunctioning android. It seems the “virus” can affect the hosts in a number of ways. Maybe they stroke out, like the original Abernathy. Maybe they just get curiouser and curiouser, like Dolores. Maybe they go on a killing spree, like that gunslinger in Episode 1. Or maybe, as is the case with the android this week, they. . . become self-destructive? Some consistency would be nice. There are just a few too many permutations of this virus to track.

Alice in Wonderland: It was a nice touch to have Dolores read out from Lewis Carroll’s classic book about an innocent girl in a blue dress, lost in a world marked by madness. The key phrase—“who in the world am I?”—fits perfectly with Dolores’s journey of self-discovery. But, I confess, the more compelling Dolores line was her later comment: “I think when I discover what I am, I'll be free.” Some fans have theorized that Bernard keeps chatting with Dolores because he has an inking that he might be an android as well, and is trying, through conversation with her, to figure out the limits of their respective programming. Or perhaps, like Arnold before him, he’s just too captivated with the idea of a perfectly replicated consciousness.

Popping Their Cherries: Both Dolores and William had their first taste of blood in this episode. Significantly, William learned the joys of violent encounters and playing the hero without fear of reprisal. Something tells me this won’t be the last time either of them kills, and that either one or both of them is on a path towards total innocence lost.

Wyatt and the New Narrative: We get introduced to a whole new narrative involving Teddy’s backstory, featuring a killer named Wyatt. Wyatt, a former army man, is mad and bloodthirsty, but also bears the marks of an android who has become self-aware. During Teddy’s exposition, he says that Wyatt knows the land of Westworld belongs to neither the cowboys nor the natives, but to some third, god-like entity. Wyatt and his cohort attack with an other-worldly sound, reminiscent of Lost’s Smoke Monster (or a Jurassic Park T-Rex). According to Teddy, they believe they are already dead. We know Ford’s new narrative requires a “huge portion of the park,” but how do Wyatt and his creepy followers fit in?